My name is June and I'm a blogger

I'm still here. 

Over here, behind the floor plant, leaning to  my extreme right, trying to get some lamplight onto my knitting in order to save my sight until I finish this baby blanket. The yarn is very soft and slippery and slides very easily off my needles, so I can't do this job by feel. The blanket is for one of the poor souls who is still employed at Small Pond, and whose baby is due in January. I hope to have this project finished and delivered long, long before the baby's here. Or rather . . . there . . . with her. Not here, please God. 

I, myself, am no longer employed at Small Pond. I retired on my 65th birthday, the soonest I was eligible to collect my pension. I continued to work two days per week for three months. On the morning of the twentieth of September, as my boss and I were chatting pre-actual-work, I said, "Bill. I think I'm finished."

"You're finished."

"Yes. I think I am."

"Do you have a date for this?"

"Yes. Today. At four o'clock."

And so it was done. My whole week, my whole life: my own.

I have been having The Time of My Life enjoying the freedom of being socially acceptably unemployed! I love it when people say to me that I have earned it. Oh my, have I ever earned this. My retirement routine is still evolving. I'm still just doing small things that I want to when I want to, spending much too much of my time cuddling with and talking to Molly and Peep, but then, that's what they're here for, isn't it?

I feel sure that the following two items are related somehow.

1. I was gobsmacked by the results of the presidential election. Sick at heart and stomach. For a few days I engaged in commenting on news stories, but that just makes me angrier, so I think I've stopped that.

2. Today, on a full moon impulse, after I finished at the supermarket, I took the hour-long drive to my childhood home. 

Just to see, just to breathe the air there. 

It's been more than forty years since I've driven past the old farmhouse, although I've Google Earth'd it many times. The route there and back revealed such changes, yet the geography alone pulled me onto the proper roads. ("Is that the road? That's the hill...") And it was. Amazing.

It's no surprise that the space between the house and the road (the space that I ran madly across to try to get on the school bus before I was old enough to go to school, lunch bucket full of rocks rattling in my hand) is not acres wide, that the tree that held our rope and board swing is not The Big Tree of memory, but only a reasonably sized tree. It's dead now, the top all wrecked and broken, covered with vines. The pond appears to be much larger than it was when I was nine or ten, probably because more of that area was then swamp and less of it pond. It's where we gathered up frog eggs and jarred them, watching as they turned into pollywogs and then set them free back in their home. 

Maybe the moral of my story is simply that all things change, but I'm still here. Still breathing. (Thank you, Friko.)

Monday miscellany

An observation: A dead, dry, curled leaf being windblown this way and that on a narrow dirt road can appear to be an indecisive small rodent. It's a misperception that has caused my stomach to leap to my chest many times as I hie down the road in the car early in the mornings. It's my opinion that the squirrels and rabbits and voles and chipmunks, and all their ilk, deserve their space in this Eden just a little more, perhaps, than I deserve mine. To harm them would be the ultimate in bullying acts.

My pets are beloved mostly because they don't tire of my attention. I am happiest when I have a love object upon whom I can heap hugs and kisses, into whose eyes I can gaze for lengthy periods of time. Husband will only sit still for that kind of thing for just so long before he feels the need to go insulate a window or plow a driveway, so it's good for me to have Peep and Molly with whom I can be a complete sap. A local groomer likes to include pet-related quotations in her ads. I stopped reading those ads, and decided I would never patronize her shop, when I read, "Cuddling: holding your pet hostage and telling yourself that he likes it."


Often, my coworkers and I say, "I'm tired of this cast of characters." We're referring to the powers that be and/or any of the other regular players in our office life. I have given some thought to making a list of all those characters and going down the list, writing a little piece about each of them. It would provide enough blog fodder for months, if not years. And, like pet-cuddling, it might be therapeutic for me.

The picture is Ava Crowder, during her prison stint in Justified. Sometimes my coworkers and I wear that exact facial expression.

Mrs. Cole

Mrs. Cole was born and raised in a certain part of London, but has lived in the US nearly all of her adult life. Still, she has her accent -- when she says her name her lips make a perfect round O -- and I love to see her. Not only for the accent, but because she is A Character. 

The first time I met her she came in absolutely ranting about the village's quarterly charge for refuse collection.
"Why, I never! In LONDON we never 'ad to pay a PENNY to have the trash collected. We putTit out and it wenTaway!" 
Her jaw was dropped and her blue eyes were wide. Her thick brown and silver hair vibrated in a fat bun. Despite her outrage I could see that some of her bombast was simply for the fun of having her say. I went to the counter, stood to one side of Phyllis, who was taking the begrudged payment. I just wanted to watch. I love accents and I love characters, and I was delighted with this particular show. The third or fourth time she said something about how much better the London system was, I couldn't help myself . . . I offered: "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaa, but y'came 'EEEAH, DI'N'Tya?" 
Her head whipped toward me, her face agape. I do believe she thought I was another import. If I had thought I would be able to maintain the dialect, I would've continued, but I couldn't do it. 

She was in the other day to pay the same kind of bill. She had her pug dog with her and we had a lovely long chat about how wonderful dogs are. 
"I wouldn' say this to EV'rybuddy, you know . . . but there ARE times when I like him BET'a' than I like the kids!" and she . . . chortled.

I do love to see Mrs. Cole. I replay our conversations for days afterward, trying to mimic her vowel sounds. 
"I 'ad decided I wouldn' getTanother dog, because . . . after all . . . I'm AYTEE years old. But I saw him and I 'ad 'im named within thirty seconds!"
A woman after my own heart.

Court People

I have written before about the Court People, about whom we say, "If they could read, and follow directions, they wouldn't be going to court."
So typical, this story: Man threatened to burn baby clothes

Why didn't he just burn them, or throw them away, or mail them to her, or do one of any number of other things, instead of threatening to burn them?
Why didn't the ex-girlfriend just go get the clothes instead of calling the police?
How long had the clothes been there? The child surely would have grown out of them soon anyway.

Is there some logic here that I am missing?

Seasonal [and other] observations

Now comes the season of the woolly bear migration. Or, rather, The Great Woolly Bear Dispersal, since they are all crossing the roads, but about equally in opposite directions. Just now coming back over the hill from the supermarket at thirty miles per hour, I watched carefully not too far in front of my car for small moving things and swerved this way and that way so as to avoid squashing any of the little guys. At one point I was faced with a Sophie's Choice -- one caterpillar heading east, the other heading west, and in such proximity to each other that if I saved one, I would obliterate the other. The only thing I could do: I stopped the car until they were out of my path. I'm glad there was no one driving behind me. I have seen bumper stickers that say, "I brake for fill in the blank" but none of them say "...woolly bear caterpillars." If there is one, I should avail myself of it.

I have stopped picking tomatoes. I feel a little guilty about that, but I can pick no more. Husband has noticed the abundance of red globes remaining in the garden, and has brought in his own piles of the things. 

He is making fresh tomato juice, a monumentally delectable item that I have never tasted before. It involves the food mill, and lots of patience. Too much fiddling for me; I just want to get to my book. But he doesn't mind, and I am glad to do the Wifely Praise part of the operation. The Wife Rule Book again, you know.

The soapstone stove's installed and operational. Notice, please, that we ordered it in brown metal rather than black. My choice because the brown is just about the same color as the ash and dust that will inevitably accumulate on the thing. Once it's rolling for the season, it will be too hot to dust or wash, so we might as well have it filth-colored to begin with.

Sweet Young Thing, my new morning boss, is still a refreshing change from Jane the Tyrant. I do find, howsomever, that she is one of those who get their talking points and marching orders from Rush, Sean, and Glen. 

"...all those people who are making us the minority!"

"The only reason Obama got elected was that he got all the blacks and Puerto Ricans to vote."

I wanted to say, "HOW DARE THEY!" but I did not.

I foresee June keeping her mouth shut in the area of political discussion. Friday morning I came about as close to getting into it as I hope ever to do. New Boss was lamenting the abundance of other-than-Caucasian students at the local college. She went on with such . . . vigor . . . about other cultures ruining "ours" that I finally asked, in a mild and curious tone, "I wonder why our culture can't withstand that influence?"

A pause, and then: "I don't know."

"Well," I said, "maybe it'll make you feel a little better to know that four of them were just murdered in Guilderland."

"Oh! That! That was terrible! There were children!"

I have yet to nail down the age at which but what about the children! cuts off and veers into . . . distaste, or how long people have to be in this country before they're acceptable.

Okay. Enough of that incendiary writing. Back to the safely prosaic.

Molly had fresh rabbit for breakfast this morning, and eschewed her kibble as a result. It's good she doesn't want to overeat. She took the bunny leftovers to the garden and hid them. Husband walked down to see if he could see how much was left. I watched the two of them from the upstairs bedroom window and saw Molly pretending the hiding place didn't exist ("Let's go down this way, Dad!") and Husband looking, looking, as Molly stood by, her tail wagging feebly, apparently hoping he would not find and steal her cache. He did not find any evidence of bunny remains and the two of them returned to the lawn with one of them vastly relieved.

Blogger goes auto-pilot!

That hugely uplifting post that appeared yesterday was posted all on its own. I had posted it probably a year ago, and would not have chosen it for my reappearance message. If Blogger's going to re-post my posts, I wish it would choose happier ones. So now I am forced to reveal to you that I live and breathe, still, and my brain continues to churn out thoughts the way a sausage grinder churns out chopped meat for packing into tubes whose origin I shall leave unmentioned. Let me add that I am delighted to know that a few of you have missed me and still remember me after my long abandonment of you all. Really, you can't know how nice it was for me to see notes from you!

A few bringer-up-to-daters:

1. Husband remains the answer to my long ago prayer
2. Molly and Peep are still our beloved furry babies
3. I'm still working for Small Pond, although . . . 
4. Morning Boss has left the building! She of the shrieking complaints about my breathing, my dewy hairline in the eighty-degree room, my inability to divine how to perform tasks previously unseen . . . is gone to work at a larger pond, replaced by a Sweet Young Thing who chatters out her every thought. And so I say to you all, as others have said again and again: Be careful for what you wish. I wanted conversation. Boy, have I got conversation now.
5. Afternoon job, downstairs from Morning Job, continues comfortable and happy.

Husband and his friend installed a vegetable garden hundreds of feet long and thirty feet wide. He planted kale, brussels sprouts, romaine, leaf and other lettuces, green and wax beans, cantaloupes, cucumbers, summer squash... But the stars of the show are the seventy-two tomato plants. Seventy-two. They all bow down under the weight of clusters of tomatoes like giant-sized green grape bunches. Some of the fruits have grown between the plants' stalks and the stakes that hold up the plants. Those must be pulled out two-handed, and often break in two at the division of the two halves, somewhat unpleasantly reminiscent of the division in a human's backside. Molly gets those broken ones. Molly likes to help garden.

There is a black chow chow wandering the hillside, chasing cows. The dog control warden is aware of him but as yet unable to lure him (her?) into a crate for carting off to the shelter. The dog has been in our field early in the morning, sleeping . . . has trotted down the country lane ahead of my car and then off into a field . . . sooner or later the poor thing will need to give in to the dog warden's temptation or, I fear, be shot for chasing those cows. A hoof to the head is as likely as the shot, and devoutly to be wished avoided.

We also have a black and white cat skulking around the fields. It yowls at some point nearly every night, and Peep and it have had words, although no combat. As yet. I have only seen the thing at some great distance and it appears to know what it's doing in the hunting department. 

For both of these wandering creatures, winter will be harder than they now imagine. If they imagine it at all. Doubtful.

So, please . . . be reassured, those of you who feared that I might be weaving the noose to end it all. Life here goes on, summer has been a pleasure, yet again, and I continue fatter than ever and as happy as I am wont to be.  The sadnesses of my young life always underlie everything in my brain and heart, but they don't consume me so much as it would appear from the 8/31 post.

Now that Blogger has yanked me back into circulation, perhaps I'll be more fruitful. I would hope, however, that I shall be less fruitful than our seventy-two tomato plants. Nobody's computer could download posts of that size.

Janeless

Important background, see here: My Starving Brain, 8 February 2010

Jane has taken another full-time job. Elsewhere. She still works for Small Pond, but her job is changed from full-time to part-time. Chief Executive, reportedly, begged her not to take the other job, but she told him, "They aren't taking no for an answer."
She will be in the office after I have left for the day. We will communicate through notes. 
During my workday mornings, I may now hum, sigh, laugh. I may breathe deeply. I might never have to work in the same room with her again.

I feel as if I'm on vacation. And yet . . . I'm about to go shower in preparation for going to work!

Miscellaneous thoughts

The 7/6/2013 Quote of the day was Thor Heyerdahl's, "For every minute, the future is becoming the past."
I remember having that thought when I was very young. Even to think "Now!" takes a second that will never come back. When people finish something unpleasant and say, "Well, there's an hour of my life I'll never get back!" I know exactly what they mean.

I have a book on my shelf called, "Living Through Breast Cancer." Every single time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, I think "Better Living Through Breast Cancer," and smile to myself at the silliness of the thought.

For me, lying on the grass with my dog is like yoga. I feel my spine click around, feel my shoulder and neck muscles relax... I become aware that my skin is an organ of my body, and I pay attention to its messages. All that is among the reasons I like warm weather. It isn't as much fun lying on crusty snow with an icy wind blowing over me. I have tried it and I know.

I read the other day that everybody in Europe is genetically related to every other European, as close as cousins. I can't now find the article but it didn't surprise me. It's about the same as the village I work for: if you start counting through people you know, you'll shortly come to a relative of the person you're speaking to. Europe's the same way, just bigger. It's a "six degrees from Kevin Bacon" thing. We are all related. Depending on one's feeling for Family, that's either good or bad.

Perfectionists learn to take time to do a thing properly. I always used to think I was a perfectionist because I was always frustrated with my mistakes. I have, however, always hurried through chores because I wanted to get to the "sitting and reading" part of my life. Morning job and observing Morning Boss have begun to teach me that it's all right to take a little more time to make sure I'm on the right course.  Removes a lot of the tension from any task.

I wish I liked myself better. I have accused so many people of thinking I'm not good enough, when, really, it is I who has no use for myself. (Should that be "I who have no use...?") 

The really good thing about mowing the lawn on the tractor is that I'm creating my own breeze while I'm accomplishing something that needs to be done.

Happy talk

It's nice to talk to people in far away places. 

I often engage catalog call center employees in conversation. Had a long and enjoyable conversation with a woman in Oregon several years ago. We knew each other's life stories by the time we hung up. Poor call center employees probably talk to some surly people; it's fun to joke with them, ask where they are, talk about the weather. I like to think I'm improving their days as I am mine. They probably think I'm crazy. Are they wrong?

Last week at work a man named Frank called me from Southern California and asked how I was. "I am wonderful!" I told him. He then heartily inquired as to how things were in the Great Northeast. 
"Oh, it's lousy," I said. And then I apologized to him, saying, "Sorry, I'm well stuck in my winter doldrums." 
He was looking for information about a property in the village and had been given an out-of-date address. I couldn't find the information in my records, but asked for his phone number in case I found something useful. He ended that conversation with, "You are a delight!" 
I fiddled around and found the property he inquired about and called him back and gave him all the info he wanted, and then he advised me to tell my boss and all my coworkers that I was wonderful. When people say things like that to me, my usual response is "I do, quite frequently." 
I think in this case I responded that he should tell everyone he knows, and to refer to me by name.

At work, I answer the phone.

This morning when I got to work, there was a message on the office phone. The message was from a woman who gave her phone number but no name. She was asking that someone pick her up. I returned the call prepared to give the woman the phone number for the county transportation department, who could send out a bus to her.
The person who answered the phone was the caller's sister, who said she had her sister staying with her, and . . . "She isn't feeling well . . . mental health wise. She thinks she's well enough to ride the bus. And she isn't. She's getting almost too bad to live with."
I know how the woman feels. "I understand," I said. "My mother..."
"...was like that?" the woman asked.
"Yes. And nobody helps you unless they're a danger to themselves or others."
But mentally unbalanced people can do a lot of damage without being called "dangerous."
As we hung up, I think that woman felt better. I felt worse, having been sucked back into The Bad Times With My Mother.

A few weeks ago, a woman called, having seen an ad for a business advertising "cash for houses." She phoned the number in the ad, and the receptionist didn't know how it worked and said she'd have a representative call back. She and her sister were trying to sell their deceased mother's home, and what did I think about it, did I know anything about that particular "cash for houses" business? The woman wasn't computer savvy, so I  Googled the outfit and read a little about it. I counseled her to expect to get a lowball offer on her mother's house, if she just wants to dump the house, it would be a way to go. I hung up and said to Jane, "I feel like Dear Abby."

On October 21 and again on October 31, I picked up the phone at work to speak with a woman who was inquiring whether or not the Village would be having Halloween on the 31st. I'm not actually positive it was the same woman both times, but the voice was similar. On the 21st she explained that the weather forecast called for rain, and she didn't want to send her child out to trick or treat in the rain. On the 31st, the caller didn't offer any explanation for her concern. Both times, I think I said something like, "Halloween is Halloween. It happens on October 31st. It isn't something the Village schedules."

I suppose there are community groups that have Halloween gatherings, but they aren't affiliated with Village government. I won't be surprised if someone phones about when the Village will be holding Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve. The Halloween woman, or possibly, the Halloween women, has apparently grown up in a world in which she looks to the government for answers to her every question, and probably complains that the government tells her what to do every moment of each day.

Things I haven't told you

I didn't tell you about the great blue heron who was crossing the road. I slowed way down so that I might get close enough to see his details, but wary heron unfolded his wings and rose off the macadam while I was still a couple of hundred feet away. I have heard that migrating ducks look for herons to find resting places . . . the ducks are supposed to know that if a shy heron is hanging around the place, it's safe. I think that idea might give ducks a little more intellectual credit than they might deserve, but what do I know?

I didn't tell you about the red tailed hawk that watched me walk by on the seasonal road. When he saw me coming, he took off, but came back and perched in the same tree that he had left and stayed in the top of the tree, glaring at me from thirty feet in the air. 

I didn't tell you about the Canada goose family waiting at the side of the road until my car passed. Papa and Mama waited with Baby Gosling between them. When I remember the trio, it seems to me that Baby Gosling might have had a red balloon floating above him, the string tucked under his wing.

The Canada geese are getting ready to migrate. This morning I passed a stubbly corn field filled with them. They're perfectly camouflaged for hiding in cornfields; the only way I could see them was to look for their heads above the cut stalks. The flocks have begun maneuvers in preparation for migration. I had Angus outdoors this morning, heard them honking and was pleased to be looking in just the right direction to see them appear over the trees that border the fields. Fortunate. Most times, I hear their voices and can't tell where they will appear. There must have been a hundred of them, all honking. As they flew into view they were just a mess of geese, but they formed up into some ragged Vs as I watched. These might not even go away for the winter. Quite a number of them stay around all year, as the robins do. It seems to me that robins used to go away in the cold weather; now they loiter through the winter.

I didn't tell you about the man who came into the office whose brogue charmed me. "He says I need to sign this in front of you," he said. 
I couldn't help it. I asked him, "If I bring you the phone book, will you read it to me?" 
Afternoon boss says the man blushed. I had looked down at my clasped hands (I think I was blushing, myself) so I didn't see if we were becoming rosy simultaneously.
I did the notary public thing (Do you affirm that the contents of this document are known to you and that it is the truth?) and he nodded and blinked his blue eyes and said, "Yis . . . yis." 

Waitress anxiety dream #10049

And again, a waitress dream... 

These nightmares visit me when I'm feeling unappreciated, frantically-worried-but-can't-show-it, etc. . . . all the emotions that were with me during every shift when I was waiting tables.  

These dreams are always like this: I'm new, nobody shows me the menu so I don't know what goes with what or what the presentation should look like, I don't know the tables that are in each station, I don't know where anything is. I walk in the door, whip out my order pad and head for a table whose menus are closed: they look ready to order.

This perfectly applicable photo from "Do You Do That at Home?"

This dream was a little different.

Most of the workers are nice to me, if a little condescending . . . until the end when one of them openly sneers at me and her companion laughs. 

The beef stew, or stroganoff, or whatever it was, is served in an aluminum wash kettle deal, about 9" long and about 5" deep. One of the assistant managers passing by smiles at me and puts a piece of bubblewrap on the charger plate that's waiting for the washtub. I whisk away the bubble wrap, replace it with a napkin, smile happily at him.

Place is a restaurant but with shelves and aisles like a supermarket.

Fat middle aged women sitting all over the place at desks, smoking cigarettes.

One woman worriedly asks me a question about a paycheck with the payee's name spelled incorrectly. I reassure her, cite the law that applies, and rush away to get a piece of flatware, thinking, "Wait until I tell Jane that there's one of those nervous, picky women in every office!"

I woke myself up as I spoke out loud, asking a table of four Australian sailors, who were complaining about something going on outside the front door of the place, if they'd like to speak to the manager after I took their order.

I woke up and sat on the edge of the bed, sweating, remembering (this is true, not part of the dream) Priscilla raging at me on a Saturday night about 8:30 in 1989 because I kept taking C5 and it wasn't in my station anymore since she and another waitress had rearranged the stations. 

Ugh. 

Happy Monday.

All right. So . . . what's new, you ask?

I have become lazy with my blog, for which I do apologize, although I feel quite sure that no one is suffering in my absence. 

Perhaps a general update is in order.

Weather: Was rainy day after day after day for a week and a half. When it wasn't raining, it was gray and chilly. March was sweeter than May, and I know I am not the first out which that to point.

Work: Morning Job is answering the phone and little else. Of the little that I do, even less leaves the office sans correction: a fault of my tendency to read the fine print and miss the headlines. I have asked Jane if there is more I can do to help. She smiles, says, "Oh June, don't make me laugh." Damaging to my ego, but from another point of view, I'm being paid to do almost nothing for three hours every weekday. 

Jane and I are getting along famously these days, though. If I had known, two years ago, that she would be so nice to me now, I might have been able to accumulate a great stash of alprazolam.

Pets: Max is still wobbling around in his Huggies Lil Snuggler diapers applied as belly bands. He eats, sleeps, eliminates. Husband says the dog is happy; what do I know? 

Angus and MiMau continue in their happy, selfish, clownlike behaviors, bless their little furry hearts.

Now then, moving on to the cataclysmic: Husband had a heart attack.

He got sudden pain the length of his right arm a week ago last Wednesday, was with a friend whose daughter just graduated from medical school. Called the daughter who said, "If it was my dad, I'd tell him to go to the ER." Husband hung up the phone, said to the friend, "Mike, would you go to the ER?" Mike said, "Hell no! I wouldn't want to go to the hospital."

Husband's arm continued to ache. Just his arm. His right arm, not his left. Not his jaw, not his chest.

Last Sunday he was working with the tractor, brush hogging, felt dizzy and faint, got off the tractor and lay down on the ground for a minute until he felt better. He stopped working, put away the tractor, and rested. (I didn't know about the "feeling faint" part until Monday morning.)

So Monday morning, he got up and immediately took a hot bath because his arm hurt so much. Got out of the bath and headed for bed again. I got out of the shower and said: "This is the plan. I'm going upstairs to get you some clothes and we're going to the ER."

None of the medical personnel seemed too concerned about the pain in his arm until the blood test showed that enzyme that indicated he'd had a "cardiac event," and then everybody shifted into high gear. He went by ambulance from our little regional hospital to the Big Hospital and he had three stents put in: one artery, two veins. He "tolerated the procedure well" and his heart is not severely damaged.

He came home last Wednesday and he is fine. Can't drive for one to two weeks, has new medications to take, but all in all, it was about as not horrible as such an experience could be. He's been advised, until the doctor advises otherwise, not to walk too much, not to do anything too strenuous . . . mostly because of that newly punctured little doorway in his femoral artery.

The irony of the entire situation is that Husband comfortably wears tiny clothing, moves and walks all day long. I, on the other hand, wear large clothing and appear as the Merriam-Webster illustration for "sedentary." 

If he's having myocardial infarctions, perhaps I am in serious danger. Resultingly, I have found a new resolve to move, to walk, to . . . sweat from exertion. I suppose this is good news. Or maybe I'll be breaking loose dangerous substances that might cause me to become the Merriam-Webster illustration for overcooked broccoli. 

Ah, Monday. Yet again.

Pay day. That's good, although the thrill is lessened by knowing that the funds were transferred on Friday. Pay day is no longer the Christmas morning that it used to be when I got cash in an envelope. I should just shut up about that and be happy I get a paycheck, shouldn't I?


Weather's supposed to be good today. Right now, it is 24 degrees, and feels like 15. Every time I think of the "feels like" temperature I think of L from Florida scoffing that "If it's _______ degrees, it's  _______  degrees. Never mind what it FEELS like." Easy to say when you live in Florida where the temperature is currently 52 and will top out today in the 70s. How well I remember her shuddering and shivering, wrapped in her coat and an afghan on a balmy October evening when we sat outdoors enjoying an unseasonably warm temperature for the northern hills. "Feels like" ought to get a little more respect from someone who's experienced such an evening. 
Every year the same discussion: She wouldn't be able to stand the northern winter and I wouldn't be able to stand the humidity of a Florida summer. We have finally agreed on that and no longer speak of it.


This evening I will have the pleasure of returning to the office to take notes at a meeting between some volunteer board members and a few representatives of the world's largest chain of hamburger fast food restaurants. The proposal is to raze and rebuild. This is the second meeting of the parties. The first was long and labored. Our civic volunteers' comments bordered on the rude: late in the evening the man in the suit who wanted to invest in the community thanked the chairman for a single smile.
I can hardly wait to experience a second parley.

Weekend. At last.

I have written lyrical, pretty prosey posts. This is not one of those.

I am so glad it's the weekend I could plotz.

For most of the week . . . no, for all of the week, I wrestled with one of the cops' "times used" in order to get it right for reimbursement from the workers compensation insurer. He got his finger broken while subduing an evildoer on June 13, and came back to work on September 8. What with hours used from accumulated Comp time, Holiday time, Personal time, Vacation time, Sick time, and 36 hours one week and 44 hours the next week to make several two-week, eighty-hour pay periods, the project just about drove me around the bend. It's about as done now as I can get it. If I have to go back at it again on Monday I might have to cry or vomit or just get up and come home. Or go to the bus station and wait for the next Greyhound no matter where it's going.

My heart is warm with friends I make,

And better friends I'll not be knowing,

Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,

No matter where it's going.

My right eyelid is red and puffy.  Just the lid, not the eyeball. I believe it is the fault of my makeup or my facial cleanser having gotten into my eye. This happened before and it healed itself in a few days.  At that time I determined not to use the cleanser around my eyes and not to overdo the makeup too close to the lash line. I broke both of those rules and the next day? You guessed it. I went to work yesterday with my Quasimodo eye and no makeup, hoping somebody would say, "You look sick and should go home immediately." No one did. No one even noticed or mentioned it until I was walking out the door at 4:30. 

Did I mention I'm glad it's the weekend?

On the way home I stopped at the bank, withdrew funds to pay the school tax and put the check in the mail. It is due on Monday: perfect timing. Then I stopped and picked up a greasy delicious pepperoni and onion pizza for supper. At this rate, what care I about the numbers of my cholesterol and my bathroom scale? It is the weekend and it is all mine. Mine, mine . . . all mine. I even believe that the sun might shine. If I die before Monday, at least I will be current with my school taxes.

I just don't know

I am often confused about politics in general, and my own in particular. 


I'm employed by the smallest possible governmental unit, and, of course, I see what I do as necessary to the general good. Somebody wants to build a fence between his yard and his neighbor's; the law says it can be no more than eight feet in height. He wants it to be as tall as possible and who are we to tell him a fence on his own property can only be eight feet tall? He has a deck and if he sits on his deck, he'll still be able to see his annoying neighbor. The annoying neighbor, on the other hand, will get No Sunshine on his property if the fence is as tall as our man wants to build it.


Small Pond, the village that employs me, had a little damage from the floods. Nothing in comparison  to the village that I call My Village. After the flooding, Small Pond's authorities had a dumpster put in place for use by the one street of people whose cellars and cellar contents had been damaged by the water. A couple of officials went door to door to let that street's residents know the dumpster was there for them. There wasn't wide publication of its presence because it wasn't meant for regular ol' garbage. A Man Who Is Never Happy phoned and complained that the dumpster was too high . . . people kept wanting to borrow his truck so they could reach the top to throw in their ruined armchairs and things. "And what about the old people?" he asked. "How are they supposed to use it? In BlahBlah and OverThere, they had trucks go around and pick up from in front of houses."
"Yes, those would have been National Guard troops going house to house where entire houses had been swallowed up by flood water and were being gutted," I did not say.
"I had to replace my furnace twice in three days!" he ranted. "Do you know how much that costs?"
"Yes. Yes I do," I said, calmly.
He went on for some time, complaining that the dumpster was there, that it was unsightly, complaining that it wasn't accessible enough, complaining that the sidewalk on his street has a dip in it that still held water. 
"I don't mean to be a pain in the ass," he said.
"Too late," I did not say.


People call every week on trash pickup days. 

• The truck [that went by at 7am] didn't pick up my trash and I put it out there as soon as I got up at 7:30! 
• The containers are too big for me to move from my garage to the curb! What am I gonna do? (To that person, I did say, conversationally, "I guess I'd ask my neighbor for help.")
• The containers are too small for our household: we have nine people in our family. 
• The containers are too big: I don't fill it up in a week. Why should I pay the same amount as the people next door who have nine people making trash?

All of us who take these calls wish that Small Pond would get out of the garbage business. The group of people who make these decisions keep renewing the contract. The alternative would be to have individual haulers coming through the village every day of the week, with trash containers sitting out on the curbs here and there every day of the week. And the cost to individual households would be higher than the existing arrangement. And maybe some people wouldn't have a hauler come, and would let their garbage accumulate. And then there would be . . . vermin. Another can of worms. So to speak.


So, I think about these small-scale problems, and I think about people's dissatisfaction with the services that Government provides, and I know that there is no winning. Sometimes I think that this country is too large and too varied in need and custom for one government to perform services that make people happy. Even perhaps this state, with its great variation in population densities and lifestyles . . . for Heaven's sake, we have New York County (aka Manhattan) and Onondaga County in one state! 


Everybody thinks the government should do some things for the public good. But it seems that nobody can agree on what those things should be. 
Take care of the roads? Yes, of course. But what roads? If all the roads are partially demolished, in what order should they be repaired?
Provide education to minor children? Sure. The argument goes, "We all benefit from communities filled with people who can read and write." Do the schools need to provide basketball programs? Swim programs? And, well, you know . . . Husband and I have no children, but we've been paying school taxes forever.
I get a tax break because I own land that's used partially for agriculture. Why should I get any favors because we could afford to buy that much land?
I pay taxes that pay for the state trucks and other pieces of equipment that are dredging out the streams that the floods filled up with gravel and rocks and rootballs. But I'm on top of a hill: my land won't flood. At least not until the gravel and rocks and rootballs accumulate to a depth of four hundred feet. I guess that would take quite a while.


So here are the questions that I keep coming back to: 
Should we just let it all go and let everybody get by as well as they can on their own? 
Should we have no permanent dwellings where there might be floods, or tornados, or wildfires that start by lightning? 
Maybe we should all migrate seasonally, garden with pointed sticks, live in houses partially heated by the bodies of large animals. 

At night in summer and all day in winter the peasants shared their huts with their animals. Parts of it were screened off for the livestock. Their body heat helped to keep the hut warm. ~A History of Homes

My boss read the other day that the house of the future will have no livingrooms. Dwelling units will have fewer rooms, and those rooms will be multi-purpose. That sounds to me like a return to a way of living that worked for humans for a good many years. We'll all have multi-generational households, filled with fleas and the aroma of manure, and we might be stuck all together for weeks on end if the roads are impassable, but at least it would take our minds off complaining about government.

Three days and counting

Full Moon dates 2011
Year	Month	Day	Time	Day of week
2011	Jun	15	20:14	Wed

As I have mentioned before, the full moon does things to me. They are rarely pretty things. We used to have a boat, kept it docked upon a big lake in the Adirondacks. In a conversation with some new "lake" acquaintances, Husband told them, "On full moon nights, you'll see June down at the end of the dock. Howling."

The full moon makes my consciousness wispy, holey. It's an uncomfortable feeling, as if I'm dreaming in a world where everybody else is awake and a couple of beats ahead of me in awareness. The detachment and confusion have been moving in on me like fog since late last week. I blamed the rain, but no, it's the full moon. And it isn't finished with me yet.

By 8:14pm my incisors should be scraping my chin... 

On Friday at 4:30pm I will be on vacation. I will be At Home. Most likely I won't be drawn off the property for anything other than books or food. I'd like to believe I'll accomplish some housekeeping chores that I have put off for unrationed time but if I'm honest, I probably won't.

My mother's mother used to call peonies "pineys." The first few times I heard her say something about "pineys" I had no idea what she was talking about. 

One afternoon, some of my classmates walked by. 

"Who's the darky?" she asked me. 

"What?" 

"Who's the darky?"

It was the mid-1960s, I had just read "Gone With the Wind," and I was horrified. 

Horrified! to hear such a politically incorrect term from a blood relative of mine.

I believe I recall setting her straight, from my fourteen-year-old perch of moral superiority.

And I believe I recall her setting her lips so as not to . . . perhaps . . . cuff me. 

She was a real old time countrywoman, that grandmother, born to farm life before the turn of the 20th century. She had borne seven children, one of whom died (a twin) and only the last of whom (my mother) was born in a hospital. In her younger years, she got up every morning and made a big country breakfast on a woodstove in the farmhouse cellar. Pancakes and pies, eggs and meat for breakfast. Every morning, for the men, her husband and sons, who would come in from milking and then go out afterward to do more of the everlasting work.

When they cleared out, she'd clean up the dishes in boiling water poured from a kettle on the woodstove into a metal dishpan, and start peeling potatoes for dinner. It seems as if all she did was cook and clean up after meals. Cleaning the house didn't enter much into the equation, and she stood me in good stead there. 

Country dirt is cleaner than city dirt.

Y'can't make this stuff up, Part deux

It's been a while since I recorded some of the "Y'can't make this stuff up" moments at the office. Every workplace has them, but work with The Public provides limitless story sources. When I was waiting tables I thought I would never be able to top some of the workday moments. 
What ever could make a better story than the woman who sat in a booth, ordered, ate, and once full, fat, and happy, couldn't slide out again? The manager had to find a wrench and unbolt the table base from the floor to give her more wiggle room. 
...or my poor customers who came in with two young sons, one of whom was sleeping and woke suddenly, suffering from a violent stomach upset. That one really doesn't bear repeating. A bland Waitress Face and a quick grab-and-scoop of all four corners of the tablecloth into a bundle full of dishes, silverware, food . . . and all . . . that I carried off into the waitstation saved us all further embarrassment.


The mass of humanity contains endless subsets: people who eat in restaurants; people who have their hair styled (I always thought that being a hairdresser would be far worse than waiting tables because if there's one thing people are more sensitive about than their food, it's their appearance); people who drive; people who ride mass transportation, and so on.  When you are a civil servant, you get 'em all. All of them. The good, the bad, the ugly. The cheerful, the ne-er-be-happy, the chatty, the silent. The clean and the dirty, the ill and the hardy.


Poopy Pants Man
The word circulated through the office that a man had arrived at 9:00am, three hours early for his court appearance. He was sitting on an upholstered chair in the otherwise unoccupied courtroom. The court clerk recognized him: he had been in her courtroom two days before, and had left traces of . . . scat . . . on the chairseat. That chair had been removed and cleaned and was drying elsewhere in the building. And now Poopy Pants Man was in there on another chair. 

One of Small Pond's Finest was called in to suggest, gently, that he wait in the lobby on the wooden bench. Poor soul. Who would choose to leave fecal stains on furniture? No one. But there's only so much in Small Pond's budget for cleaning supplies and replacement chairs. Wooden benches clean much more easily than upholstery.

Lady in the stairwell
I walked from my Afternoon Job desk to go upstairs to the photocopier. As I reached for the stair door handle, Phyllis came from the other side, wide-eyed and white-faced. She said, "You don't want to go up these stairs."
"I don't?"
"No. You don't."
"Why don't I want to?"
"You just don't."
"Okay." I turned and headed for the elevator.
At the second floor I exited the elevator to see a gray-haired lady leaving the bathroom, breathlessly twittering to her waiting middle-aged daughter. They went off down the hall, I made my photocopies, and scurried in to Phyllis.
"What was that all about?"
The lady, it seems, had had a not-uncommon Older Lady Accident as she walked through the lobby. As Phyllis was descending the stairs she had passed the woman in mid-clothing-change on the landing. 


Car burglar
Afternoon Boss and I were leaving work on court day. Court day delivers a whole new cast of characters, about whom Phyllis says, "If they could read and follow directions, they wouldn't be going to court." Bill and I lingered, chatting, just outside the building's doors. A young woman drove in and parked, took some books from her car and walked up the hill toward the back entrance to the court. Watching her trudge up the steep hill, I said, "She must be a frequent flyer: she knows the way to the back door."
When she settled at the picnic table under the tree, Bill observed, "She must just be waiting for somebody."
A young man burst through the door behind us and headed for  the parking lot, frenetically swinging from car to car. We paid not much attention to him, knowing how Court People often act differently from Non-Court People. A sudden yell from the woman at the picnic table: "Hey! What're you doing to my car!" 
The young man wheeled away from her vehicle, windmilling his arms. "Sorry! Sorry! I was just looking for my wallet. I thought it was my mom's car. I'm really sorry. I'm just really nervous right now. Sorry!" He moved off, veering loopily among the other vehicles.
Next day we got, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story. The kid had gone to court to keep a miscreant friend company. While the friend waited for his case to come before the judge, the kid left to kill some time in the parking lot. That's when Bill and I, and the picnic table woman, saw him. Court finished and the judge went home. At 8:30 the police called the judge back to the office to arraign the young man on the charges that apply for stealing a purse from a car. The picnic table woman signed a witness statement about her observations.


The Mean Man from MacMillan Road
Early every quarter a man comes to pay his water bill. His small rumply body slouches through the door, his face completely without expression. 
"Good morning! How are you?"
His pouchy dull eyes stare into mine. His jowly jaw moves not at all. He makes no response. He slides the bill and cash across the counter. Change is made and returned to him. His eyes follow the transaction.
"There y'go. Have a good day."
Silent, he pockets the receipt and change, turns and leaves.


The Shot Heard 'Round the Building
Last week the HVAC maintenance man visited for his semi-annual tune-up of the system. It was afternoon and I was at my desk, the office door open to the lobby, which is floored in marble and walled in cement-over-metal. The room echoes like the biggest shower stall in the world. The man was working on the lobby's heating/air-conditioning unit, fifty feet from my chair. I could hear every turn (wrank! wrank!) of his screwdriver as he removed the unit's metal cover. I could hear the magnified sound of each screw (Tink! Tink! Tink!) as he dropped them on the floor. 
And then he dropped something heavy, made of metal.
BANG!
I screamed.
The police chief was through the PD door in a flash, eyes alert, head swiveling.
Phyllis was down the stairs and through the stair door ten seconds later.
I sat at my desk, my hand on my chest, gasping.
"Sorry," the repairman said. "I dropped something."


The Wedding Day
One day a small, fit, happy gentleman came to the office and asked, in accented English, for a marriage license. He was tidily dressed and groomed: comb trails ran along the sides of his gray/blond head. Two days later he made an appointment for the mayor to perform a marriage ceremony. 
Ten minutes before 11:00am on The Day, the groom arrived. A shyly smiling lady followed him through the door. The delicate blonde bride wore Kelly green with white cotton lace at the V-neck of her suit jacket. The couple sat and spoke soft Hungarian to each other while they waited.
The smiling mayor arrived and introduced himself. He shook hands with the bridegroom.
"Here's my pretty lady! See my pretty lady!" 
The mayor smiled and nodded at the bride. He completed the preliminary paperwork and led the way to the courtroom. He stood in front of the judge's bench, behind the rail, and pronounced the words that made them man and wife. At the end, the mayor forgot the final instruction.
"Are you going to say it?" the groom asked. "Are you going to say it? Because I'm going to do it anyway." And he kissed his bride.
They are both seventy-something, had each immigrated from Hungary years ago. They met ten years ago, in this country, far from their birthplace. And now they're married.
They left to go tell their friends, and then to lunch.
"They won't believe it!" the beaming new husband told us.
They left behind a bunch of teary-eyed sighing females, all saying to each other, "They're so sweet..."
"Aren't they just . . . sweet?"

Sometimes you win some . . . that you thought you'd lost

A piece of mail came back to the Morning Job office, marked by the post office, "UNDELIVERABLE AT THIS ADDRESS." Jane gave the envelope to me: "See if you can solve this mystery." 


The addressee was a man with whom I'd had some pretty intense dealings through Afternoon Job. Mr. S. owns property in Small Pond and lives in the shore region of another state. In 2005 he blew into town, handsome in his dark wavy hair and expensive suit, bought a building and established a business that should have taken off, but didn't, at least partly for lack of good management. In early 2009 he subdivided his Small Pond property. A year later he had a buyer for the newly-created parcel but couldn't sell it because, officially, it didn't exist as a separate piece of property: he had never filed the deed with the county clerk. Bill and I did what we could to help him understand the problem and how to fix it: by law, he would have to go through the subdivision process again. That isn't a lengthy process, as these things go, but it does take some time. Mr. S. was . . . unhappy. 


I recall one telephone call from him that caused me to speak at increasing volume as I said, "Okay. Hold...  Hold on... I think I have... Hold... Yes, I understand. Let me just get the file. Hold on... I'm waiting for you to stop talking so I can put you on hold and get the file!" The crash of the receiver into the cradle of my phone brought Bill's head around in a spin. When the wall shuddered as I heaved the file drawer closed, file in hand, Bill asked in alarm, "What's happening?" I told him who was on the phone and summarized Mr. S's behavior and character in a salty four-word sentence. Bill picked up the call, prepared to do the pouring-oil-on-troubled-waters that he does so well. Bill's end of the five-minute conversation was as halting and increasingly frustrated as mine had been. Afterward he showed me the piece of paper on which he had made a hash mark each time Mr. S. had called him a fucking asshole. There were thirty-eight of them.


We eventually ended up accomplishing the necessary process through a local representative for Mr. S., whose financial [and, I suspect, other aspects of his] life had crashed and was burning smokily. When the subdivision had been accomplished again and the deed filed, Mr. S. phoned, abjectly apologetic, and thanked Bill and me for our help, but his buyer had gone away in the elapsed time.


So. 
Yesterday I had a piece of mail for the man, and, in my old file, his telephone number. I didn't expect it to work, but he answered.
"Hey! Mark! It's June from Small Pond. How y'doin?"
"I've had better years."
We talked for a few minutes and then I explained about the mail. He gave me the new address, a post office box. He sounded so resigned, so downhearted, that I was moved to say, "Well, Mark . . . y'know . . . my husband's uncle used to say, 'A man who has been successful might fail, but he'll get on top again, because he has been there once, and knows how.'"
"I know some mistakes I won't make again."
"It'll get better. You're young. You've got plenty of time to get back on top."


Quietly, sincerely, he said, "You and Bill are good people."
It was about as good as a God Bless.